Kat Dennings Reveals the Internal Battle Among Writers Over That 'Shifting Gears' Finale

The Season 1 finale of Shifting Gears gave us a fairly definitive, and emotional, turning level for Riley (Kat Dennings) as she lastly determined to divorce her ex-husband, Jimmy (Lucas Neff). Whereas the sitcom has largely centered on Riley navigating life as a single mom after transferring into her father Matt’s (Tim Allen) home, her relationship with Jimmy has been a serious supply of pressure all through the season and, regardless of his makes an attempt to win her again, Riley finally realized she wanted to maneuver on. However in keeping with Dennings, the choice to have Riley and Jimmy formally separate wasn’t a simple one behind the scenes.

Dennings spoke with ScreenRant within the wake of the Season 1 finale, and revealed that the present’s writers have been divided into two camps when it got here to Riley and Jimmy’s relationship, with the female and male writers having vastly completely different views. The 2 Broke Ladies star sided with the latter group, arguing that Riley had outgrown her marriage and solely stayed so long as she did for the sake of her kids. Nevertheless, it wasn’t till she met Gabriel (Seann William Scott) that she realized she deserved one thing extra.

Talking about Riley’s inside wrestle over Jimmy, Dennings shared how the discussions within the writers’ room mirrored differing real-world views on relationships:

“I actually waffled about that with the writers too, as a result of the writers have been sort of break up into two camps in regards to the Riley and Jimmy relationship. It was attention-grabbing as a result of the person writers thought one factor, and the girl writers thought one other factor. And I assumed the identical as the girl writers. It was very attention-grabbing. It is simply attention-grabbing how women and men course of this stuff.”

Kat Dennings Needed The Closing Say On Her Character’s Relationship

Dennings additionally felt that, because the individual enjoying the character we see on display screen, she had a proper to have her say as nicely, which appears completely legitimate, and that she felt Jimmy’s time was up, becase as we have seen all through Shifting Gears, Jimmy has continuously didn’t step as much as the plate as a husband and a dad.

“However since I am enjoying the character, I believe I can simply have ultimate say on it,” she continued. “I felt prefer it had turn out to be so second nature to Riley to be with him. And she or he says within the episode that each one she actually has recognized is being sad with him, and it is sort of a part of her life and a part of her identification. And I believe they’ve grown aside a lot that it is simply too apparent to her now that even staying with him for the youngsters shouldn’t be attainable for her.”

All episodes of Shifting Gears at the moment are streaming on Hulu.